Forwarded clocking and embedded clocking are examples of two clocking methods used for high-speed serial links. In forwarded clocking, there is generally a dedicated electrical channel to send clock signals to receivers, which is then multiplied to the desired frequency. In embedded clocking, both data signals and clocks signals are transmitted through same electrical channels to the receivers, and the clock signals are embedded in a data stream to be extracted by the receivers using recovery circuitry.
Compared to embedded clocking, forwarded clocking may have better jitter performance, and may achieve higher data rates. However, in order to minimize or reduce overhead of clock pin assignments and routing, a multi-drop channel is generally used in forwarded clocking to transmit the clock signals. As a result, the achievable transfer rate of clock signals for the multi-drop channels may be lower than that of point-to-point channels used in embedded clocking.
The above information disclosed in this Background section is only for enhancement of understanding of the background of the invention, and therefore, it may contain information that does not form prior art.